Fifty Acres and a Poodle

by Jeanne Marie Laskas

  “Yeah,” George says. “My grandpap and old man Collins, the one who built your house, they put these posts in together.” The two farmers divided the labor, shaking hands on an agreement that would last more than a half century. The part near the road was to be maintained by one family and the part near the forest by the other. They planted a tiny oak tree to mark the spot where one part became the other.

  “And that’s the tree,” George says, pointing at a towering oak arching magnificently over both sides of the fence.

  As it happens, the damaged portion of the fence is on our part, making it our responsibility to fix it. Hmm. I wonder if he’s made this whole story up to try and get us to fix his damn fence. I start looking at him as a dog murderer again.

  “But you know what,” George says, rubbing his lips, as if he can feel that tobacco juice stuck on there. “I’ll fix it. It’s no big deal to me.” He says he has the equipment. He knows we don’t. Plus, he’s used to it. “Two generations of the Collins family,” he says. “We got along fine.” He says the next owners of the place, the people who sold it to us, they wanted the fence agreement in writing. “They brought lawyers in here,” he says. “They came over to my place with a contract, who would pay for what, and when, and how. Finally, I said forget it. I said I’ll take care of it myself.”

  The question George is asking is more implied than explicit. And to me it feels like an invitation. Would we like to become part of the tradition of these hills? A tradition of oak trees and neighborliness, of expectation and commitment. A culture in which the nature of responsibility isn’t some mental exercise for litigators but rather a matter of one very powerful handshake.

  “Hey, why don’t I help you patch the hole,” Alex says, offering his own symbolic gesture of cooperation. “I mean, I’d like to learn how to put a fence up, because I think eventually we’re going to get sheep at our place.”

  “Oh, I can show you,” George says. “And I can sell you some sheep when you’re ready. I can teach you a lot about sheep. I went to college for sheep, you know.”

  Sheep college?

  “Penn State,” he says. “Bachelor of science in agriculture.” A college-educated farmer. This is not even close to how I imagined the man who shoots dogs.

  Roo roo roo roo!

  Speaking of which, that’s Betty’s bark. My, her voice carries. She’s off in the distance somewhere, her bark filling the valley with echoes.

  I look out over our land and can see the FedEx truck rumbling up Wilson Road, and then comes the inevitable Woof, woof, woof, woof of Marley.

  “Those are our dogs,” I say to George. It feels like a big deal to use the actual word dog in front of him. “We have three dogs,” I tell him. It feels like a confession. I describe Betty and Wilma and Marley to him. I give him very explicit dog detail. I wonder how I might pop the question.

  “You know, your sheep have been in our field several times now, and our dogs have not so much as barked at them,” I say. Which is true. “So I don’t think our dogs will ever go after your sheep,” I say.

  He’s looking at me. He’s scratching his belly.

  Alex isn’t saying anything. I wish he would chime in here. I don’t really know how to say this. I mean, how do you ask a person to please refrain from murdering your pets?

  “So there’s no reason to, you know, worry about our dogs,” I say to George. “Heh heh.”

  “Naw,” George says, straddling his four-wheeler, revving the engine. “Not if you keep ’em home.”

  He smiles, says stop on over any time for sheep lessons. He tells Alex he’ll be up here working on the fence tomorrow if he wants to help. He waves and sputters off.

  “Well,” I say to Alex.

  “Nice guy,” Alex says.

  “I wish he didn’t shoot dogs,” I say.

  “Let’s head back. It’s getting late.”

  I look at my watch. “Four o’clock!” I say. “Riva!”

  “Oh, God!”

  We were supposed to leave at four.

  We jog through the gate, down Wilson Road, the quickest way home.

  When we reach our driveway, we can see the FedEx truck is still here.

  “Tim’s still here?” I say. “Well, that’s weird.”

  The truck is parked funny. Like it’s not really parked at all. Just stopped.

  “He’s parked funny,” I say.

  “I doubt it’s another mud slide,” Alex says with a laugh.

  “Which is a good thing, because it looks like Billy is gone for the day.”

  As we get closer, we can see Tim sitting on the ground by his truck. Well, that’s weird. He’s hunched over something. Something black. Something about the size of … Marley.

  “Oh, my God!”

  We run. We run as fast as we can, our feet kicking the rocks and dust into the air.

  “I am sorry,” Tim is saying. He has Marley in his arms. A flimsy Marley. A seemingly lifeless Marley. “I love this dog.” His voice is tiny and squeaky, and his face is bright red, as if he’s ready to burst into tears.

  “Marley!” Alex cries. “No, please, not Marley!”

  “He was going in circles,” Tim is saying. “I thought he was on my right, I heard a thump, oh, I love this dog. You know I love this dog.”

  Marley’s eyes are open. He appears to be breathing. But he is not moving.

  “Oh, Marley!” Alex cries. “Okay, boy. I’m here….”

  “He was going in circles,” Tim is saying. A shrunken Tim. A weakened Tim. “I thought he was on my right, I heard a thump. Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”

  Alex scoops Marley up and carries him like a baby up to the house, Betty trotting behind.

  “Come inside,” I say to Tim. “Come inside and calm down. It’s not your fault. He’s been crazy around that truck. Just crazy.”

  “He was going in circles,” Tim says. “I thought he was on my right. I went left. I heard a thump—”

  “Come inside,” I say to him.

  “I’m going to sit here,” Tim says. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just sit here.” Wilma is at his feet, her head tilted back, her tail thumping. Wilma doesn’t seem to know whom to comfort, either.

  I head inside. Alex already has the vet on the phone. He’s placed Marley on the couch. There is no blood. His eyes are open, blinking. He seems alert. But he is not moving.

  Bob comes out. Skinny, scrawny Bob, a flimsy string where once a mighty tail stood. He walks so carefully, so slowly, because he can hardly see.

  I pick Bob up, hold him, cradle his bony body. I kiss him on the head. We go over and sit beside Marley. “It’s okay, Marley boy,” I say. “We’re going to take you to the doctor, and everything will be okay.” Marley is whimpering quietly.

  Alex hangs up the phone. “They gave me an address.” he says. “An emergency hospital.”

  He is holding the piece of paper, unable to figure out what to do with it. Well, I don’t know what to do, either. We should go together, with Marley. Just like we went together that day Betty got stung by the bee, the day we realized we were in love. But we have to go to the airport and get Riva. Or he has to get Riva. Or I should get Riva. Um. Love is getting so complicated. And at the moment, I have to take charge.

  “You go,” I say. “I’ll get Riva. Just go.”

  “What am I going to do if something happens to Marley?” he says.

  I stand up, put Bob down, fold my arms around Alex. “Go, baby. Just get him to the doctor.” I hold him tight, smell his farmer smell, diesel plus cut grass plus sheep. I see Marley on the couch, Bob on the floor.

  I am starting to feel as though I need much, much longer arms.

  GATE A-19, THE MONITOR SAYS. “ARRIVED,” IT SAYS, blinking. I charge. Riva is there, leaning on a water fountain. She is a short woman, under five feet tall, with a body that advertises her passion for food, her joy for living. She wears her hair in a jet black page boy, and her eyebrows are carefully penciled in, giving her the look of an exotic s
ilent-film star.

  She looks saggy, sweaty, bedraggled, as a person should look after a fourteen-hour transatlantic flight. She sees me and lights up with a smile. She hugs me and kisses me and tells me several dozen times how very much she loves me. She looks around. “And … Alinka?” she says. “Where is my Alinka? Why is he not standing with us?”

  “Oh, everything is fine,” I say, downplaying the drama unfolding back home. “Alex had to take the dog to the vet. He’ll meet us at the farm.”

  “Oh, my Got,” she says. “He is okay? Please, say me he is okay.” Riva often confuses the words say and tell. She is fluent in eight languages; her accent is Lithuanian with a little Russian and a sprinkle of Hebrew. In the style of Eastern Europe, she has many pet names for people. Alex is Alinka or Alushinka or sometimes Alushka.

  “Everything’s okay,” I say. “You’ve had a long trip. You look exhausted. Let’s get you home.” I keep her mind on matters of suitcases and carry-on bags, and on the ride home I elicit stories of Tel Aviv. If I breathe a word to her about Alex, about Marley, about the fact that for all I know Alex’s beloved poodle is paralyzed, is dead, Riva will explode with panic. Riva is a worrier. Riva is a caretaker. Riva is the universe’s grandmother, believing herself to be single-handedly in charge of the health and welfare of anything and anyone she loves. And she loves Alex more than anyone else in the world.

  She comes to be with Alex several months every few years because she feels that it is, at a minimum, her duty. Her duty to undo what Alex’s father did. A duty to envelop him with the love of the Levys. The family may have been extinguished, but the love lives on. Riva is here to see to it.

  It’s past nine by the time we pull up to the farm, pitch dark. Alex’s car is here. He’s back. Oh God, I hope Marley is with him. I imagine Marley hearing my car, running out, woof, woof, woof.

  I long for the sound of his woofs.

  I open the door.

  Alex looks saggy, sweaty, bedraggled, like he just took a fourteen-hour transatlantic flight.

  Riva notices. She looks at me. Looks at me as if to say, “Have you been feeding this man?”

  “Alinka!” she says. “Alinka! Oh, my Got! Alinka, what has happened? Rivka must know!”

  “Welcome!” he says to her, and gives her a kiss. “Oh, Rivka, I am so happy to see you.”

  “But Alushinka, something is the matter. You must say me. Because I know. You cannot hide your health from Rivka. Is it your bottom again? Is your bottom okay?”

  He cracks up, takes a moment to compose himself. “Just a rough evening,” he says. “I had to take Marley to the doctor.”

  I am staring at him. I am demanding, with my eyes, to know where the hell Marley is.

  “In the bedroom,” he says. “No broken bones. They think he didn’t get run over, that somehow the fender came down on him. He’s badly bruised. And they had to put a drain in.”

  “A drain?”

  “Into his gut. Some fluid in there. They said he doesn’t have any internal injuries. Just this … fluid.”

  “So he has a drain?” I am saying, as I head back to the bedroom, and Riva follows.

  I fling open the door, and there he is, on the floor:

  A hairless poodle, covered in mange scabs, with a white plastic valve sticking out of his gut, leaking pink liquid.

  “Oh, my Got!” Riva shouts. “What? What? What is the matter with this animal!” She looks at Alex, me. She rushes over to Marley, a grandmother with a mission, a calling.

  “Um,” I am saying, “I think it’s actually not as bad as it looks.”

  “Riva,” Alex says. “Rivka, he’s fine. You’re tired. You should rest. Come on, we’ll get you some dinner and put you to bed.”

  “Rest?” she says. “Rest! How can you think to rest?” She is bending over Marley, stroking his face gently.

  Just then, Bob walks in the room.

  Oh, dear.

  Skinny, sorrowful Bob.

  Oh, dear.

  “Remember I wrote to you about Bob?” I say to Riva.

  “Bop?” she says. This is how she pronounces Bob. She knows Bob, remembers him from her last trip to America, back before Bob got sick, when Bob was still Ram-Bob, defender of the free world.

  “This is my Ram-Bop?” she says. “Oh, Mammala, Bop! Oh, Mammala!” I have no idea what Mammala refers to, but it’s what Riva says when she is worried about you. “Mammala!”

  She looks at Marley, Bob. She looks at Alex, me. She looks at Alex and me as if to say, “What is the matter with you people?”

  “Oh, my Got,” she says. “Rivka is here to take care of you, my little Bop. My Mammala Marley….”

  I head into the kitchen, put some ravioli on.

  But when I call her in, Riva refuses to eat. She insists that both Marley and Bob sleep with her in her room, so she can look after them. So this is what we do. We put them all to bed and close the door.

  We sit together and sigh.

  “It’s going to be an interesting summer,” Alex says.

  “Interesting,” I say.

  EIGHTEEN

  OVIOUSLY, THE THING TO DO NOW IS TO GET A gazebo instead of a mule. That’s what I’m thinking. A gazebo would probably mean a lot to Alex. A gazebo wouldn’t get mange, or get hit by a truck, or leak pink fluid. A gazebo would just stand there. A gazebo can’t break your heart.

  I’m sitting at my desk. It’s mid-June, a few weeks after Marley got hit. He’s walking again. Well, limping. And they finally took the drain out. Tim came over a few times with bacon strips for him. A peace offering.

  Bob is here, sleeping on the scanner. I don’t know how much longer he’ll be here. I have this notion that I want him to hang on until the wedding, but that is my wish for me, not him. I mean, he won’t even know it’s a wedding. Probably the greatest gift I could give him now would be to let him let go, let him die, take him to the vet and have them do whatever it is they do.

  It’s a pretty day, a Tuesday afternoon. From my desk I can see the pond, now bursting with water lilies. I can see the birch tree, with all different birds flying around it than the birds that were here before. Were the winter birds more colorful? Or do these birds look brown only when set against the green and blue and yellow and red of summer? A lot of hummingbirds stop by, standing tall and straight in the air, their wings a fuzzy flutter, a buzz. At the moment, a hummingbird is inspecting the red needle on the thermometer I have stuck on the window. Hummingbirds are drawn to the color red. It is eighty-three degrees.

  I can see the sky in the window above. A sky that hardly moves at all anymore. A sky that is blue and flat, as if someone took a big brush and a can of latex and slapped it on.

  This is exactly the sky I imagine will be here on September 13.

  I imagine dancing, here in the big room. This would be such a great place to twirl and stomp.

  I imagine flowers everywhere in the yard. I imagine a circle of zinnias, a swirl of snapdragons, a stately row of dahlias. I imagine long rows of cosmos flopping this way and that, leaning onto the porch. I imagine baskets of geraniums hanging off the barn. But, um. When am I supposed to find time to start a garden? How am I going to create an explosion of flowers by September 13? I don’t even have a dress yet. Or music. And what about food?

  I look out at the fields that need a good mow, the driveway that could use another layer of limestone, and the newly shored-up barn that still has all manner of rubble piled around it.

  This place is a little rough for 150 people in fancy clothes. Definitely a little rough. Can we get it in shape by September?

  I reach into my folder, a big expanding file labeled “Wedding.” I take out the yellow pad of paper and flip past a list now grown fifteen pages long. “CLEAN UP,” I write, and, “PLANT STUFF.”

  The phone rings. Line One.

  “Hello?”

  It’s Billy. “I’m in West Virginia,” he says.

  “Oh,” I say. For some reason, I think this means he is with his
Uncle Ophie. Ever since he told me about Uncle Ophie, I’ve had Uncle Ophie in my head. Like he’s some cartoon character I used to watch, and I’m hoping for reruns.

  “Well, how is Uncle Ophie?” I ask.

  “Oh, he’s all right,” he says.

  Silence.

  That’s it? God, lately I am having to pull stories out of Billy. What in the world is wrong with him?

  “Well, did you spend time with Ophie?” I say, prompting him.

  “Yesterday,” he says, “I walked up, the cans started clanking. Ophie came out in his long underwear.”

  I laugh. That’s better.

  “And I said, ‘Ophie,’ I said, ‘Ophie, I come to tell you my mom passed away.’ And Ophie, he didn’t say anything. He sat right down in the dirt and cried like a baby.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “But anyway,” he says, “I found you a mule.”

  “Oh?”

  “And a horse.”

  Oh, dear.

  “You should have a horse if Alex is going to have a mule. The mule would be lonely.”

  “Oh.”

  “The mule is kinda small for a mule,” he says. “But she’s real gentle. Real gentle. She’s friends with the horse. A big darn horse. But pretty. And kids ride her down here.”

  He says the horse is a registered American Saddlebred, which does sound impressive to me, even though I have no idea what it means. Hmm. Maybe I’m more a horse person than a mule person.

  “What’s the horse’s name?” I ask.

  “Cricket,” he says.

  Aw. A good name. I love that name.

  “What’s the mule’s name?” I ask.

  “Sassafras,” he says. “But they call her Sassy.”

  Sassafras! A mule named Sassafras. That is the best mule name I have ever heard. Actually, it is the first mule name I have ever heard.

  “I rode both,” he says. “They ride good.”

  He says the owner wants just five hundred dollars for the mule and fifteen hundred for the horse, including saddles, other tack, and delivery. He says they’re in financial trouble and need money quick. He says it’s a great bargain. He says he’s buying a horse trailer from the same people, so he could put them in the trailer and bring them up tonight.